Phys.org August 23, 2022 Making informed future decisions about solar radiation modification (SRM)/solar geoengineering requires projections of the climate response and associated human and ecosystem impacts using climate models and simulations. SRM modeling simulations to date typically consider only a single scenario, often with some unrealistic or arbitrarily chosen elements (such as starting deployment in 2020) and have often been chosen based on scientific rather than policy-relevant considerations. An international team of researchers (USA – Cornell University, Indiana University, NCAR, Duke University, American University, UCLA, Japan) list several scenarios that explore different choices, and present new climate model simulation results. […]
Scientists fine-tune ‘tweezers of sound’ for contactless manipulation of objects
Phys.org August 22, 2022 The previous acoustic tweezers developed by researchers in Japan could lift things from reflective surfaces without physical contact, but stability remained an issue. Now, using an adaptive algorithm to fine-tune how the tweezers are controlled, they have drastically improved how stably the particles can be lifted. They found a way of using the same setup to achieve significant enhancements in how they can lift particles from rigid surfaces. With the right arrangement of speakers at the right frequency, amplitude, and phase, it becomes possible to superimpose the sound waves and setup a field of influence which […]
Scientists identify liquid-like atoms in densely packed solid glasses
Nanowerk August 22, 2022 Extensive studies on the structure and relaxation dynamics of glasses have constructed the current classical picture: glasses consist of some ‘soft zones’ of loosely bound atoms embedded in a tightly bound atomic matrix. Recent experiments have found an additional fast process in the relaxation spectra, but the underlying physics of this process remains unclear. Researchers in China combined extensive dynamic experiments and computer simulations and found that the fast relaxation is associated with string-like diffusion of liquid-like atoms, which are inherited from the high-temperature liquids. Even at room temperature, some atoms in dense-packed metallic glasses can […]
Sulfur shortage: A potential resource crisis looming as the world decarbonizes
Phys.org August 22, 2022 Sulfur is required for the production of phosphorus fertilizer and manufacturing lightweight electric motors and high-performance lithium-ion batteries. According to researchers in the UK over 246 million tonnes of sulfuric acid are used annually. Rapid growth in the green economy and intensive agriculture could see demand increase to over 400 million tonnes by 2040. Today over 80% of the global sulfur supply comes from desulfurisation of fossil fuels to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas. Decarbonisation of the global economy to deal with climate change will greatly reduce the production of fossil fuels. This will […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of August 19, 2022
01. Scientists Achieved Self-Sustaining Nuclear Fusion… But Now They Can’t Replicate It 02. Researchers invent self-charging, ultra-thin device that generates electricity from air moisture 03. Floating ‘artificial leaves’ ride the wave of clean fuel production 04. New faster charging hydrogen fuel cell developed 05. A new neuromorphic chip for AI on the edge, at a small fraction of the energy and size of today’s compute platforms 06. Tiny crystal vases 07. 2D boundaries could create electricity 08. This Artificial Synapse Can Run a Million Times Faster Than Ones in The Human Brain 09. DARPA Kicks Off Program to Develop Low-Earth […]
A new neuromorphic chip for AI on the edge, at a small fraction of the energy and size of today’s compute platforms
Nanowerk August 17, 2022 Compute-in-memory (CIM) based on resistive random-access memory (RRAM) meets the energy demand on edge devices by performing AI computation directly within RRAM. Although efficiency, versatility and accuracy are all indispensable for broad adoption of the technology, the inter-related trade-offs among them cannot be addressed by isolated improvements on any single abstraction level of the design. By co-optimizing across all hierarchies of the design from algorithms and architecture to circuits and devices, a team of researchers in the US (Stanford University, UC San Diego, University of Notre Dame, Pittsburg University) has developed NeuRRAM—a RRAM-based CIM chip that […]
2D boundaries could create electricity
Science Daily August 16, 2022 The presence of piezoelectricity in 2D materials often depends on the number of layers. A team of researchers in the US (Rice University, UCLA, University of Houston, AF Laboratory Wright Patterson FB, Pennsylvania State University) made a one-dimensional, metal-semiconductor junction in a 2D heterostructure. A less than 10 nanometers thick junction was formed when tellurium gas was introduced while molybdenum metal formed a film on silicon dioxide in a chemical vapor deposition furnace. The process created islands of semiconducting molybdenum telluride phases in the sea of metallic phases. Applying voltage to the junction via the […]
This Artificial Synapse Can Run a Million Times Faster Than Ones in The Human Brain
Science Alert August 12, 2022 The speed of biological information processing in neurons and synapses is limited by the aqueous medium through which weak action potentials of about 100 millivolts propagate over milliseconds. Researchers at MIT generated silicon-compatible nanoscale protonic programmable resistors with highly desirable characteristics under extreme electric fields. This enabled controlled shuttling and intercalation of protons in nanoseconds at room temperature in an energy-efficient manner. The devices showed symmetric, linear, and reversible modulation characteristics with many conductance states covering a 20× dynamic range. According to the researchers the space-time-energy performance of the all–solid-state artificial synapses can greatly exceed […]
DARPA Kicks Off Program to Develop Low-Earth Orbit Satellite ‘Translator’
DARPA August 10, 2022 DARPA has selected 11 teams, from academia and large and small commercial companies, for Phase 1 of the Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node program, known as Space-BACN. Space-BACN aims to create a low-cost, reconfigurable optical communications terminal that adapts to most optical intersatellite link standards, translating between diverse satellite constellations. It would create an “internet” of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, enabling seamless communication between military/government and commercial/civil satellite constellations that currently are unable to talk with each other. Phase 1 of Space- BACN spans 14 months and will conclude with a preliminary design review for the first […]
The entanglement of two quantum memory systems 12.5 km apart from each other
Phys.org August 16, 2022 Researchers in China have reported the establishment of post selected entanglement between two atomic quantum memories physically separated by 12.5 km. They created atom-photon entanglement in one node and sent the photon to a second node for storage via electromagnetically induced transparency. They harnessed low-loss transmission through a field-deployed fiber of 20.5 km by making use of frequency down-conversion and up-conversion. The final memory-memory entanglement was verified to have a fidelity of 90% via retrieving to photons. According to the researchers their experiment makes a significant step forward toward the realization of a practical metropolitan-scale quantum […]